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U.S. NEWS Friday 21 February 2020

Continued from front state barred anyone with
"We need to remind them Japanese ancestry from
that this can't happen buying farmland.
again," she said. "We are specifically apolo-
The resolution came a day gizing for wrongs that were
after Gov. Gavin Newsom committed on this floor,"
declared a Day of Remem- Assembly Speaker Anthony
brance for Feb. 19, when Rendon said in the cham-
President Franklin D. Roos- ber. "We are apologizing
evelt signed an executive for what we have done."
order in 1942 that led to Senators will take up a ver-
the imprisonment of Japa- sion of the resolution later in
nese Americans across 10 the year and send it to the
camps in the U.S. West and governor to sign. California
Arkansas. The governors of is providing no financial
Idaho and Arkansas also compensation.
proclaimed it a Day of Re- A congressional commis-
membrance, and events sion in 1983 concluded that
are held nationwide. the detentions were a re-
"During the years leading sult of "racial prejudice, war
up to World War II, Califor- hysteria and failure of politi- Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, speaks before before the passage of HR 77, a resolu-
nia led the nation in fan- cal leadership." Five years tion he introduced that apologizes for California's role in supporting the incarceration of 120,000
ning the flames of racism," later, the U.S. government Japanese Americans during World War II.
said Assemblyman Al Mu- formally apologized and Associated Press
ratsuchi, who was born in paid $20,000 in reparations
Japan. to each victim. Manzanar on the eastern a presidential cabinet un- and President Ronald Rea-
The resolution said anti- Several California lawmak- side of the Sierra Nevada der George W. Bush. gan signed.
Japanese sentiment be- ers noted the state's di- and Tule Lake near the Or- Mineta was imprisoned in Pan wrote the Senate ver-
gan in California as early rect role in discriminating egon state line, the largest a camp before becoming sion of the resolution, which
as 1913, when the state against Japanese Ameri- of all the camps. "one of the most influen- he intends to pursue after
passed the Alien Land Law, cans and carrying out the While the Senate didn't tial Asian Americans in the it clears a committee later
targeting Japanese farm- federal government's order vote on the resolution history of our nation," Pan this year. California has the
ers who were perceived to send residents to intern- Thursday, Sen. Richard Pan said, including leading a largest population of peo-
as a threat by some in the ment camps. introduced two sons of Nor- congressional effort for the ple of Japanese descent
massive agricultural indus- Two camps in the mid- man Yoshio Mineta, the first U.S. apology and repara- of any state, numbering
try. Seven years later, the 1940s were in California: Asian American to serve in tions that passed in 1988 roughly 430,000.q